As I mentioned before, I’m switching to a bi-monthly schedule for this chapter in Peculiar Comics.

…for now, at least. I’ve come up with a few ideas regarding printing this monstrosity. My plan is to hopefully have SOME form of printing completed by SPX this year, although I’ve only now discovered that it is in September instead of October. Oh well. We carry on.

So. Recap. Bimonthly schedule for main comic. May change back to weekly. Plans for printing. Current schedule requires filler.

AND for this week’s filler, I present the first draft of what I plan to be the cover of the first volume, which should cover up to the flood in Genesis. I may skip around the Bible from there.

…so I’m starting to realize that “Book of the Spaceman” comics take quite a bit of time to do in Illustrator. I COULD, in theory, do a severely stripped-down version by hand, but one of the things I learned in the Vortex Experiment was to maintain a unified look to the project. Thus, “Book of the Spaceman” installments will be posted every OTHER week.

In the weeks between, I assure you there will be SOME form of content posted here every Wednesday. This week, I have my submission to Velocity‘s most recent DRAW! contest: “HOW I BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF ________!” I chose Cyclops. It’s not that I’ve got any particular ill will towards the character; I just felt he was the best candidate for a bizarre beat-down. It’d be simple: stab his f***ing eyes. BUT! In stabbing through his visor, I risk death and/or dismemberment. LOOPHOLE! Send a monkey to do it for me.

In the meantime, feel free to catch up on old strips from BotS, the Vortex Experiment, and the previous comics in archive, and check out the Pretentious Facebook Fan Page. I’ll see you next week with a new heretical visualization of the Book of Genesis.

I SHOULD NOTE FIRST THAT THERE ARE QUITE A FEW MISREPRESENTATIONS IN THIS COMIC.

First and foremost, my drawings do not do Brigid justice. She’s absolutely beautiful, whereas my drawings make her look like a deformed west coast plastic surgery victim. (This is why I wish to one day write comics as opposed to drawing them.)

Second, meeting Brigid was probably the BEST thing to come out of my previous drinking habits.

Third, the apartment we hung out in was not an awful cubist experiment; I’m just bad with perspective.

I’m not doing this for some sort anniversary or special occasion; I’m doing it because it’s an honest “slice of life”, and one of the most important “slices” of my life thus far. I’m learning to take from things I’ve experienced when the inspiration pool is dry, in lieu of stressing my brainspot only to come up with something half-baked and awful.

There’s more to this story; no, we didn’t do the “college” thing and “hook up” right after meeting. After that night, we went to our respective homes, bellies full of butterflies and hearts full of fond wishes for the future, along with vague plans to go to a party together* the following evening, plans which never came to fruition.

Maybe I’ll tell the rest one day…

*I should also note that a friend of mine was talking up her roommate, and was part of the plans, as well. Funny enough, neither my friend nor myself went to that party, and I wound up at my place drinking with my roommates.

YOU HAVE MY ETERNAL RESPECT if you can spot the “Frisky Dingo” reference.

If you can’t spot that, then I’m sure you’ve ALSO spotted the lack of a conclusion to the “My Fucking Raygun” story. Yes, I’m actually working on it. No, it’s not COMPLETELY done. No, I can’t guarantee it’ll happen next week.

To be fair, though, I was doing the MFR stories completely on a tablet, and that takes a long fucking time. For the most part, everything else I’ve done for Peculiar Comics has been primarily accomplished using pencil and paper, with some digital editing and finishing flourishes.

I like doing these little black and white “slice of life” stories (because it’s a well-known fact that hook-ups with aliens happen way more often than you’d care to admit) because they’re different than what I usually draw and write, and VERY different than what I usually read. Granted, my past two reads have been Asterios Polyp, which you should go out and buy if you haven’t already, and the third volume Love & Rockets, which you should also read if you haven’t already…especially since L&R‘s been around for…oh, almost a quarter century now. These stories are also completely hand-done. Granted, I do adjust the levels a tad in Photoshop, but that’s only to fix what the scanner has botched.

Next week, you’ll see either the conclusion to “My Fucking Raygun” or the true story of how I met my girlfriend of two and a half years.

DUE TO A COMPLICATED* SCHEDULING ERROR, Vol. 2, No. 7 will be late, as in up next week. Instead, enjoy the one I had done for next week. It’s drastically different, I know, but I wanted to try something more slice-of-life (sorta) with less focus on detail and more on simply telling a story and/or telling a story simply.

…and while, yes, this was inspired by things that happened to me in grade school, I’m not a bitter person. Promise.

*And by “complicated”, I mean involving a combination of late space shuttles, doppleganger incidents, and historical retcons.